


A Pride of Fakes

by orangecookiekay



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alien Technology, Altean Geoff, Altean Jack, Altean Jeremy, Altean Lindsay, Black Paladin Ryan, Blue Paladin Gavin, Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Family, Explicit Language, F/M, Former Yellow Paladin Geoff, Gen, Green Paladin Jeremy, Half-Galra Michael, Mild Language, Non-Canonical Violence, Quintessence, Quintessence Shenanigans, Red Paladin Michael, Tags May Change, Team as Family, Voltron au, Yellow Paladin Lindsay, gen but im trash so hints of ships, hints of jackeoff, hints of jeremwood, i know that's contradictory but look sometimes i want more blood than canon offers, im genuinely just here to have fun, tag as we go, voltron legendary defender au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-20 21:16:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16563284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangecookiekay/pseuds/orangecookiekay
Summary: 10,000 years ago Geoff Ramsey was forced to split the Lions of Voltron before succumbing to emergency cryo-sleep. 10,000 years later, he wakes up alongside Jack and Lindsay in a dead castleship, no Lions, and a hopeless universe on the brink of total conquest. Now more than ever, the universe needs heroes, but Geoff is no hero, and neither are the newly chosen of the Lions. Misfits, maybe, but no heroes. If he's being real honest with himself, the best Geoff and the newly assembled Paladins are going to be able to do is fake it. But hey, there's a reason it's called fake it til you make it, right?-aka, a very self-indulgent but also canon-divergent Voltron Legendary Defender au.





	A Pride of Fakes

**Author's Note:**

> the source material is garbage, but I'm not much better, and I'm still going to pick out the good bits to use and hope I can frankenstein together something. let's see how far we can go, I guess.
> 
>  shoutout to nescamonster, who's been letting me yell about the au and bounce ideas, and also check and make sure i wasn't abysmal with writing love you nesca!
> 
> oh, and uh, reminder:  
> one decaphebe is the altean equivalent for one earth year, one tick is the altean equivalent of one second.

The fog in her mind broke into dizzying clarity and stale air stung her nose as her pod finished its reanimating sequence and suddenly Lindsay was falling as her knees buckled. With a startled yelp and racing heartbeat she caught herself before she could smack the ground, the name of her boss, confidant, advisor, and betrayer tearing from her lips before her brain had caught up. Then it hit her all at once, in a very strangely backwards order. Geoff, cryo-replenisher units, the Lions, splitting Voltron, pushing the castleship to its warp limits---

Altea burning.

Lindsay’s breathe came out haggard as she tried to keep her rage and despair down. Not now, Linds, Lindsay told herself as she began to steady her breathing, gotta figure out where the hell the castleship had ended up in, find Geoff and rip him a new one, and---she looked up, and then realized that all around her the lights were off. In fact, the air was stale from a lack of ventilation and oxygen recycling, and smelled of something metallic and papery having rotted over time. Given the technology of the castle, however, that shouldn't be possible. Lindsay stretched her shoulders and shook the sleep out of her hands as a console lifted up from the flooring to greet her. Two birds with one stone, she figured; the console could give her an idea as to what was happening, and messing with his ship was an easy way to summon Geoff.

"Should set all the controls to inverted just for shoving me into a fucking cryo-replenisher. Hear that Geoff? I'm gonna invert all the controls from here, make the controls to activate the doors into the controls for the engines!" Lindsay loudly threatened as the console activated and, after some scrolling, found a curious notice on the units behind her. Apparently, two more cryo pods were in use. Not only that, but the pods were set up to activate from one of two stimuli. The first, that a paladin was using their warp-home beacon to call for a gate to the castleship. The second, that the main power for the castle was depleted and on emergency power.

According to the console, her cryo-pod had been activated to wake her up for the latter and not the former.

Behind her, the two active pods rose up to wake their occupants while Lindsay sputtered to herself, "That's not _possible_. Main power shouldn't even come close to half for over a thousand decaphebes. What, did the one thing Geoff skimp out on when he helped build this shit happen to be the power distribution?"

"F-fuck you, my baby's a paragon of technologic-oh shit- perfection." came a reply from behind Lindsay, the voice achingly familiar even as sleep-heavy as it was, and Lindsay turned in time to see Geoff gracefully stumble on his feet out of one of the pods. From the other pod Jack stood, who had wisely decided to stay still and grip the edge of the rounded frame for support until he was stable and fully awake.

"You wanna bet, old man? Because according to the console the reason we woke up is because the castle's on emergency power." Lindsay tossed back as Geoff shakingly stepped to join her at the console podium, grumbling the whole time and dragging his hands down his face in hopes of sloughing off the sleep and exhaustion. Even for however long they had been under cryo-sleep, he still had drooping eyes and concerningly large eyebags weighing down his eyes and pulling at the skin of his blue eye marks.

"Fuck off my baby's controls and check Jack." he grumbled, waving dismissively at her, his voice croaking from sleep. Lindsay huffed at him but left him to check the console while she checked on Jack. Much taller than her and Geoff, with natural short red hair, a full beard and even redder eye marks, Jack looked better kept than Geoff, who constantly looked tired with his eyebags and messy head of unruly short dark hair.

"I'm fine." Jack told her, stifling a yawn, "Don't kill him." he gestured to Geoff, who was very still suddenly.

"I'm going to kill him a little." Lindsay admitted with a half smile that belied her anger. She was resolved to her rage for at least another month, she had decided. She was not going to forgive him so easily for shoving her into cryo-sleep just because he didn’t want to listen to her tear apart his argument. They should have regrouped the Lions and fought head on from the beginning, not split them up and run like cowards.

"Get in line, because I think this console's going to kill me first." Geoff said, low and quiet. When Lindsay and Jack turned to face him, somehow he looked even more haggard than before, weighed down by an insurmountable weight that Lindsay had a bad feeling about.

"What, why?" Lindsay demanded.

Geoff rubbed his hands at his face briefly, thoughtful as to how to say it, before he tutted and thought, fuck it, just like a bandage, "We're on emergency power because the power crystal's depleted. And it's depleted... because we've been sleeping for ten thousand and five years."

“WHAT!?” Lindsay and Jack harmonized.

“Ten thousand years!?” Jack repeated.

“And five.” Geoff added.

“What do you mean we’ve been asleep for ten thousand years?! How?!” Lindsay demanded.

“Ten thousand _and five_ years.” he corrected again, “And I don’t know. If you’ll stop yelling, we can get to the deck and I can see what’s going on.”

-o00o-

As it turned out, they had been hemorrhaging power for ten thousand and five years. The particle barrier couldn’t stay up when they were warp jumping, so they must have gotten hit somewhere vital on the last warp jump before touching down the castle on a random planet and shutting her down. With everyone inside put to cryo-sleep and no hands to stopper the flow or repair it, the castle had been bleeding out power while it was set to its own version of sleep mode until its systems detected its status becoming critical.

Geoff bent over the main deck’s console, elbows on the surface and his head in his hands. Ten thousand and five years they had been asleep bleeding out like a dumb animal, ten thousand and five years for the Rooster Empire to have spread across the galaxy, ten thousand and five years for them to find the Lions.

The doors slide open for Jack to enter the deck and approach Geoff. He had been with Lindsay as she opened up the holo-star charts to find out where they had landed, for how long, and how royally fucked they and the universe was.

“Just get it over with. How fucked?” Geoff asked, not even looking at Jack, keeping his head in his hands.

“Remember that time on Gaizakol, when you and Matt got smashed on a horrifying mix of Galra absinthe and the Gaizol ale, had a three day long fighting club with only you two as the members yet somehow both of you lost the tournament to a pet hamster, and got the alliance banned from ever coming within six million light years of the Gaizol system until it was smoothed over three decades after, because you and Matt personally and thoroughly offended all thirty nine of their galactic representatives?“ Jack answered after a thoughtful pause.

“Yeah?” Geoff answered, peeking out from his hands.

Jack nodded, “ _That_ fucked.”

“Ah.” Geoff proceeded to bury his face once more.

Jack settled beside him, knocking their elbows together on the console as he mimicked Geoff’s stance for all but his head in his hands, instead clasping them together and rubbing the cold from the fingertips, “There is some good news though.”

“Shoot.”

“The Lions are still split.” Jack said, and he became quiet again as he let Geoff process that.

Geoff’s head lifted half way out of his hands, still cupping his mouth. If the lions were still split, that meant they were still hidden and safe from the Empire’s hands. Which meant the Empire didn’t have Voltron. Which meant, at least somewhat, that the universe wasn’t totally and completely screwed. Just _mostly_ screwed.

“Did she find them? All of them?” Geoff asked, meeting Jack’s eyes.

“All except for the Red Lion are accounted for. Lindsay even found the Black Lion, but it’s moving.”

That could mean anything. It could mean that the Black Lion was adhered to a comet and moving with its orbit through space, or that the Black Lion was on a ship being moved, or even inside a weblum or balmera as it journeyed through space, or---spirits above let it be anyone other than _him_ , _or_ , the Black Lion was being piloted. But, Geoff breathed through his shaking, whatever that meant, it still left the other four Lions apart.

“Do we know where we are?”

“A planet called Arus. It’s unfortunately within Empire territory, but it’s never been claimed for resources, so for now we’re under the radar.” However, unspoken but understood between them, was that they had no idea for how much longer that would remain.

Geoff breathed through his nose, tickling his mustache, and then he straightened up and off the console and turned to the doors. Jack followed him down through the hallways, still dark and unlit from the castle remaining on emergency power, until they found the holo room. The space was dark, but the lights of the holo-star charts were soft and brilliant to behold. Much of the stars and systems the star chart showed were in purple or red, and only a few remained an untouched, neutral cyan.

In the center of the maps, slouched with one hand on her hip and the other waving the chart about to show more stars, more systems, more of the known universe, was Lindsay. Her hair, dirty blonde roots sprouting from deep red dyed strands, was pulled back by a pearlescent headband to move the hair out of her face as she scoured the holo map shifting around her.

She turned, seafoam eye marks lit bright amongst the stars and the dark. Geoff and Jack came to stand beside her in the center of the holo map.

“The closest Lion to us is actually Yellow, believe it or not.” Lindsay said. The star map reeled to a series of systems where a bar and a small avatar of the castle pinned itself to a small planet, neutral cyan among a sea of purple, and to its far right, several star systems away, was another bar and an avatar of the Yellow Lion, bathing Lindsay and Geoff in soft yellows. Geoff hummed, ignoring the well of longing in his chest at the thought of his old Lion, left alone to rust for ten thousand years.

“Doesn’t do us any good though since we can’t even operate the particle barrier, much less fly off this shitty rock.” Geoff told her matter-of-factly.

“Yeah, but,” she interjected almost like a trill for a song, “but, guess what else is real close by to us?” She didn’t wait for him to answer as she waved the star map to spin left, and a new bar popped up. Geoff first looked at the star, then realized it wasn’t a star at all. He didn’t even need to look at the text above it to know what it was.

A balmera. A colossal petrified organism that free floated sluggishly within quadrants of space, it provided a planet-like home to the Balmerans on its surface, who in turn took great care of the massive creature with whom they shared a powerful, almost telepathic connection with. But, most importantly, a balmera produced crystals filled to the brim with quintessence that would power the ship. Either way, however, they’d have to take a shuttle and fly to either location and fly back, no warping.

Geoff stared down the balmera avatar, thinking to himself before he turned to Lindsay, “How far away are we from the Yellow Lion?”

“At least nine hours one way if we max out the shuttle. Eighteen total.” But, if they got the Yellow Lion, the Lion could probably fly back to the castle in less than three. But the castleship would still need a crystal to become spaceborne, and the Lion would be the sole shield until they could get a crystal.

“And the balmera?”

“Five.” They’d be risking more time for the Lion to be found. But, the castle would be able to open fire and keep any enemy fire away while he could go down and get Yellow.

Or, and the way the idea curled in his chest Geoff knew it was a bad idea, _or_ , they could all three leave the castleship behind and split up. Lindsay and Jack could go get a crystal from the balmera, and Geoff could go get the Lion.

Bad idea, never split the party this early, Geoff berated himself, and yet still it spilled out of his lips, “Alright, here’s the plan. You two prep a shuttle to go to the balmera and get us a battleship-worthy crystal for the castle. I’ll take another and go get Yellow, and we’ll just meet back up at the castleship.”

Jack became very still, both he and Lindsay making faces at him, “That sounds stupid.”

“We’re just gonna leave the castleship behind?” Lindsay asked.

“Why not? It’s fuckin’ dead in the water without a crystal, and just because Yellow’s been undiscovered for ten thousand and five years doesn’t mean that can’t change like _that_.” Geoff emphasized with a snap of his fingers. “The shuttle comms won’t keep instant transmission if we’re outside of the same system but it can still send the signals to each other if any of us find trouble.”

Jack shook his head teeth gritted in a deep frown, “I don’t like it.”

“You got a better idea?” Geoff challenged.

“Fuck no, I just don’t like it.“ Jack said.

“Noted.”

“Alright, then let’s go suit up and prep the shuttles.” Lindsay said, shutting down the holo map with finality.

-o00o-

Ten thousand and five years was a long time. For them, it was hours ago that they were running for their lives, baiting the Empire to follow while the Paladins split and took the Lions to hide, merely hours ago that they watched their planet go up in flames. Countless dead, and how many more perished over the centuries? How many more were hunted and killed?

Were there even any Alteans still alive out in the universe? Were they the only ones left?

Lindsay and Jack both hated Geoff’s idea. Splitting up so immediately after coming out of cryo-sleep was bad in of itself when all they had was each other. The shuttles had basic shields that, compared to the Castle of Lions, was paper to bricks. The shields could deflect fighter ship fire, but not for extended fights and definitely nothing stronger than a scouting class ship. The shuttles had no firepower to speak of either. If they ran into trouble, either they were going to come back to the castleship with their prize, or not at all.

“I have a bad feeling about this.” Lindsay sighed, checking hers and Jack’s firearms and their suspension rigs for the fifteenth time since they set out. The rig was taut spring cables and high-powered magnet rods that would keep the crystal still as they flew back, hopefully suspending it enough that the edges wouldn’t touch the floor, walls, or roof of the shuttle and accidentally fry the circuits.

Jack nodded, “I do too. But, it’s what we’ve got.”

“Do you think Geoff’s going to pilot Yellow again?” Lindsay asked.

“Well he’d have to, to bring it back to the castle. No way you can tow the Lion with these shit for shuttles.” Jack answered.

“No, I mean, really. Black was on the move, meaning it’s being piloted-”

“You don’t know that.” Jack pointed out.

“- _yes. I do_.” she snapped, steel certainty holding fast in her tone, “Black’s being piloted. If we can get the other Lions, we might find their new Paladins too. So do you think Geoff’s going to pilot Yellow with a new team?”  

Jack didn’t know. It looked like it. There was a lot of mystery to the bonds between Lions and Paladins, and they hadn’t even started looking into how to go about changing the guard for new paladins for new generations before the very first team had torn itself apart. And then there was Geoff himself.

He had piloted Yellow for almost six hundred years. Before everything had fallen apart, before the Empire turned around and burned Altea into dust, he had come to Jack and Lindsay, separately, and told them that he was looking into finding a protege, so to speak, someone who could pick up the Yellow Paladin mantle from him and bear the weight of those duties as well, if not better, than Geoff had.

He never said why. Just that he was looking into finding a replacement, trying to find that one mysterious quality about a person that instantly made the Lion and that person compatible.

They had to hope, too, that the other Lions could indeed bond with new partners.

“We’re coming up on the balmera.” Jack voiced, checking their navigations, “Should be visible in just a few ticks.”

It was. Lindsay glanced up through their port to spot it, looked down to readjust her firearm straps, and then did a double take back to the view of space. Jack’s jaw dropped in horror, “Oh no.”

The balmera, even as far from it as they still were, looked absolutely sickly. Lindsay brought up scanners and flinched at the imagery of the balmera’s thermals and the outlined layers of its body functions. They were color coded, and a healthy balmera would have been coded in green and blue. The scanners showed splotches of sick yellow, deep and bloody red, and a rotting dark burgundy.

“What _happened_ to it?!” Jack questioned, shocked at its state. As far away from it as they were, he could see a sickly storm clinging to its self-made atmosphere, could see the bare bones of the massive creature sticking out from its rock and dust hide like sharp, grotesque spines instead of the full and strong spires it should have been.

“How is it even alive?” Lindsay added. Were there even Balmerans living on its surface, or was the whole self-sustaining ecosystem just rotting away in space?

Alarmed and weighted with dread, Jack reassigned the scanners to move their focus from the balmera’s condition to find ship signals. Lo and behold, there was Empire pinging on the scanners, tech rooted deep inside and all around the balmera’s surface. There was no way the scouts on the surface hadn’t already spotted Jack and Lindsay headed straight for them.

Lindsay switched the safety off their laser rifles while Jack flipped the barrier shields on. Their shuttle was blanketed in a translucent cyan grid as the shield activated. The shuttle’s display pointed out scouting ships approaching them and as soon as they were in range, Jack pulled them into a corkscrew dive out of incoming fire and then threw the shuttle back on course and weaved back and forth from the scouts that had flipped around to follow them. Laser shots flew past them, a few nicking the shields but being absorbed harmlessly.

Jack barrel-rolled the shuttle out of the way of a scout that had stayed behind, closer to the balmera, and had attempted to rush them. Still on course, all too soon they bulldozed past the atmosphere the balmera created and Jack had to tear his eyes away from the view and focus on dodging for their lives.

The surface should have been covered with crystals as far as their eyes could see the same way a tree was supposed to be covered in leaves. Instead it was completely barren with not even a single shine or shimmer of a crystal on the surface. Instead there were dark but glowing spires sunk into the surface and the balmera’s surface canyon holes where the inhabitants would have made homes in. If it hadn’t been clearer before, it was certainly clear then that the balmera was being mined and plundered for every crystal it was worth squeezing out of by the Roosters, with no consideration of the balmera’s safety or health.

“I’m going in!” Jack took a sharp turn and dive-bombed straight into a hole, bringing up his scanners to show him the way to navigate the caverns. As they descended they passed more spires and foundation built by the Rooster Empire deeply embedded into the rock like an insidious parasite burrowing its way in, and Jack pulled up sharply before he could hit the solid ground. The cavern opened up into three pathways, and while all of them were being revealed to end in dead ends, only one of them would open up for him and Lindsay to get back out and open fire with their rifles.

Jack took that one, but then suddenly found the wind whipping his clothes and wailing laser fire right next to his ear. Their view port was no longer hanging over their heads but receded back into the rest of the shuttle, and when he turned he realized Lindsay was hanging out the side of the shuttle, one foot planted on the edge of the cockpit and one knee burrowed into the back of her seat, releasing shot after shot from her rifle in the direction of their pursuers.

“Lindsay, what the fuck-! Get back in here, you know that rifle’s too weak to do a damn to those fighters!” Jack yelled, trying to spare a hand to grab her by her tunic and pull her back in. She was too far across the seats however.

“I’m not _only_ shooting them!” Lindsay snarled back, firing shots in rapid succession.

Jack was too concerned with not crashing their shuttle into the closing in walls of the balmera caverns to spare a look back to see where and who exactly Lindsay was aiming at. He’d have to trust her aim while he flew them. They were coming up on the dead end though, and fast.

Over the sound of their boosters and the laser fire swapping between Lindsay and their pursuers, a loud boom and accompanying crackle came over head, followed by the sweet sound of Lindsay whooping. She ducked back down into the shuttle, grinning, and when he threw her a questioning look her grin grew, “I shot a pillar and it collapsed part of the cavern.”

“So now we’re stuck.” he pointed out.

“But now we got a minute to hide the shuttle and sneak past them while they try to get through.” Lindsay shot back, smirking.

Jack shook his head, not liking the chances. But, it was what they had to work with. He slowed the shuttle down to look for an alcove or a boulder big enough to hide the shuttle behind. He spotted an alcove that opened a new branching tunnel that he swerved them into, coming to a soft and quiet landing despite the loud and rocky beginning of their flight. He grabbed his rifle and parts of their suspension rig for the crystal, shouldering them or letting them hang on his back before he hopped out. Lindsay followed similarly.

He spotted a few more loose boulders along the cavern path they could add to better hide their shuttle, and he called her to help him move them. After aligning them so that any fighters that got through and passed wouldn’t see the shuttle behind the boulders, they looked around then to each other.

“Alright,” Lindsay began, dusting her hands and letting them rest on her hips, “do you want to ask for directions or do want me to?” she asked, earning a small chuckle and a shake of his head.

“Yeah, because we can just ask… what, the balmera?” Jack dryly replied, gesturing at the distinct lack of anyone for them to talk to besides each other.

Lindsay planted her hand against the wall, “Hey balmera, sweetheart, I’m sorry the Roosters are a bunch of inconsiderate a-holes. You mind pointing us in the direction of a battleship class crystal you might have lying around? We’re in dire need of a crystal for our ship so we can kick Rooster ass and take names. Thanks babe, appreciate it.” she finished with a fond pat.

Jack chuckled at her, “Is that how you sweet talk everyone you want something from?”

Lindsay’s hand left the wall of their tunnel, “Oh yeah, doncha know Jack? You gotta be sweet and to the point for Lindsay lovin’.” she joked.

“Spirits, okay. Let’s check down there while we don’t have any trigger happy company.” Jack changed the subject and pointed down the tunnel branching away from the alcove. Armed with their tools and laser rifles, they began to make their way through, eyes peeled for trouble or crystals.

The tunnels were completely silent besides the sounds of their pursuers’ ships behind them, and a constant but quiet humming of machinery that Jack presumed to be the work of the Rooster Empire.  No wind, no footsteps, no proof of life within the balmera. The air was warm from the balmera’s body heat so they could count small miracles.

Jack had grabbed a handheld version of the scanner from the ship mounted to his wrist, a smooth and rounded construct providing a holographic map of their whereabouts. Their eyesight was good in the dark, but not perfect, and the tunnels they were in appeared to have been untouched by the Empire. The scanner pinged at him that they were coming up on a dead end and he ignored the disappointment he felt. Nothing was ever easy.

“And here’s the dead end-” he began, Lindsay humming next to him, but both froze still as the tunnel grumbled and they heard something ghostly and echoing within the tunnels. They looked at each other, wordlessly asking if what they were hearing was machinery, or the balmera itself. Then, before their eyes, the dead end of the tunnel came apart, pieces of the rock receding and reforming into the side walls. A new pathway had opened up right before their eyes, leading into a large clearing.

The clearing ahead was lit from Empire machinery and vehicles-not ships, but small anti-gravity kites that were for individual flying and built for quick mobility on the ground. The area was not vacant either. Empire personnel and sentry robots could be spotted  ahead as well as bipedal creatures in tunics trudging across the clearing.

Lindsay and Jack ducked into the darkness of the tunnel and pressed flat against the walls, Jack on the left and Lindsay to the right,  hidden from immediate view as they watched.

Ten thousand years of becoming conquest-driven people had included an armor upgrade, they could see, as the heavy body armor was thick, sharp, and mean looking with red insignia like wounds or blood spray signifying rank of the various personnel. The robots were upgrades too, faceless and featureless with the exception of the single red “t” on the visor, a single eye. In the past they were smoother, smaller.

The balmerans-for surely that was who the grey and dark brown reptilian beings were trudging along under the scrutiny of the soldiers-were led in groups of five with three groups at work, pulling or pushing coffins that even as they were floated above the ground, appeared quite heavy. Once emptied of their burden, they were sent back into one of the different branches of tunnels scattered around the clearing wall, escorted by at least two soldiers.

Even as soft as the padding was, Lindsay and Jack’s ears twitched at the soft, cautious patter of footsteps behind them and they swiveled around. Three balmerans, one no taller than Lindsay’s hip and the other two towering well above Jack, stood hunched in the darkness with them. They eyes, solid gold, absorbed their spacesuits-Lindsay’s in soft powder blue, yellow, and green trim while Jack’s was in navy, gold, and white, and the stirling white rifles in their hands. Judging by their expressions, the three balmerans had not expected to stumble upon Lindsay and Jack.

“Please…. Whatever you want from us,” began the second tallest of the three as they tucked the youngling behind them, “just please don’t hurt us.”

“We aren’t here to hurt anyone.” Jack said, firm but gently.

“Unless they’re Rooster.” Lindsay added, “I am Princess Lindsay, of Altea. This is Jack, Second Advisor.”

“...uh-huh. If you aren’t with the Empire, then what do you want from us?” asked the tallest, her eyes narrowed and subtly raising her right arm as a small deterrent between the other two balmerans and them. Of the three, she was the only one with thick metal earrings, four of them to be exact,  clipped to her large, triangular ears. She wore a dark, dirtied violet and gold trimmed tunic while the second adult was in green and gold, and the youngling in a red-brown. Of their group, the tallest seemed most inclined to fight or flight while the other two stood still and watched closely.

“We’re in need of a crystal. Our ship’s dead in another system and without a new crystal, we’re a sitting target. “ Jack explained.

“Of course you do. The Empire reaps the crystals from our balmera with no rest, no end. But hey, what’s one more party to add who wants to take even more than what we can give?” the tallest snarled at them, anger overpowering her fear.

“Look, we aren’t here to hurt you or the balmera. We know where the Voltron Lions are. If we can get our ship moving, we can find them and unite Voltron to free you from the Empire, free the universe from the Empire.“ Lindsay spoke up.

The other two balmerans perked up, the youngest whispering the name to themselves. The tallest flinched, looking at her companions before growling to Jack and Lindsay, “Voltron is just a myth.”

“A myth--” Jack stopped before he could go further. Ten thousand and five years, he reminded himself. The universe had gone for ten thousand years without the super weapon and mighty defender to answer the call and prayer of the people who needed it most. He couldn’t blame them for their disbelief. Not now.

“I understand it's been thousands of years, but Voltron is real, and we can unite the Lions and bring Voltron back.” Lindsay butted in for Jack as he recovered, “In fact one of ours has already gone to get his Lion.”

“You know of Voltron?” piped up the youngest balmeran before the one shielding them hushed them. Their shielding balmeran, however, was looking at the two with interest.

“So you want us to risk our lives against the Roosters to give you a crystal under the promise of a youngling’s tale? Do you even hear yourself talking?” the tallest snapped.

“How big of a crystal do you need?” asked the balmeran protecting the youngling, making the oldest jump and look at them incredulously.

“You can’t be serious!”

“Battleship class. I know it’s a lot to ask for,” Jack answered sympathetically, “but once we have our ship repaired and set up with the new crystal, we can come back here with a Lion and help free you.” The younger two of the trio listened, almost enraptured as Jack offered them the idea of freedom from the Roosters. The taller, however, remained steadfast in her conviction. The taller shook her head, earrings swinging with the movement, and she bared her teeth.

“There is nothing we can give you! Do you understand what you're asking for?” she demanded, snarling, “You're asking for us to risk our lives, risk the wrath of the Roosters coming down on us, just so you can take more from us the same way the Empire takes from us!”

Lindsay flattened to the wall to twist around and check that the soldiers and balmerans in the clearing were still unaware they were in the tunnel, before she turned back to Jack and the three balmerans. Her left palm still flat to the wall.

“Look, pal, you have every right to not trust us,” Lindsay began, leveling her gaze on the tallest, “but before the Empire destroyed our home and hunted us, Altea had a solemn oath. Any and every crystal from a balmera was only taken when the Altean who asked for it offered their own life energy in exchange. If you help us get a crystal, we can offer you the same. At least this way you can know we aren't just fucking with you.”

Jack shot Lindsay a look that she decisively ignored. The ritual for exchanging quintessence with a balmera as trade for a crystal was a simple one, but it required at least four assistants to help concentrate the flow of quintessence from the giver to the receiver, and the one who performed it, the same person who would give up their energy, was always of royal blood.

They were only two Alteans, and Lindsay was only royal in title, not in blood.

Still, her eyes were blue steel.

The taller stared Lindsay down, their eyes boring into Lindsay's, until something else caught her attention and her eyes swept over to her hand on the wall, and then back to Lindsay, eyes wide. “What have you-”

A low, ghostly wail slowly quaked from far below their feet that reverberated up. Rock crackled around them, a strange trembling surrounding them that had the three balmerans plant a single palm to the walls, dip their head down and close their eyes. While Lindsay and Jack pressed themselves to the wall to keep their balance, a brief blue glow engulfed the rock the balmerans’ palms were flattened against.

The quaking and the ghostly cry of the balmera quietened, and out in the clearing the soldiers rushed about in a new excitement. The balmerans with them were ordered away, at least two groups still accompanied with armed robotic escorts. When Lindsay and Jack tore their gaze away, the taller of the three before them had a hard, angry stare.

The second adult and the youngling, however, looked at them with something like hope, as the youngling said, “The balmera heard you! It believes you! It has a crystal, a big one, that we can lead you to!”

The taller sister, meanwhile, hung her head as she heavily scowled, “Son of a bitch.”

-o00o-

….why did he think splitting up was an idea to follow?

Geoff rubbed at the corners of his eyes, fingertips briefly gliding over eye marks. Ten thousand and five years of sleeping, he figured he wouldn’t be tired, but he was. Bone deep tired to wake up to the ugly purple and red that had spread across the map of the known universe, choking the cyan and green until everything was just bleeding purple and red, bleeding Roosters. He wondered if anyone from the past was still alive, and then wondered why the hell he didn’t bring a reader with him if his mind was going to go this route for nine. Fucking. Hours. Straight.

He wondered if Yellow Lion would accept him back.

He wondered if he really wanted to be taken back.

He and Matt had agreed on splitting the Lions to keep Voltron out of the hands of the Roosters. Lindsay had argued that their best course of action was to keep the Lions together and fight.  In retrospect, they had no other choice but to split the Lions and run, with no one to take over the Black Lion after her first pilot, but ….

But ten thousand and five _years_. How many trillions of lives could have been saved if they hadn’t gone to fucking sleep?

The shuttle chirped at him to alert him it was coming up on the planet hiding Yellow Lion, startling him out of his thoughts, thank fuck. Then it proceeded to alert him, entirely too late to backtrack naturally, that the planet was also very busily occupied by Roosters. Roosters who were happy to oblige a personal greeting, as fighter ships flew up from the quickly approaching surface.

Geoff pulled the shuttle into a rough, ungraceful corkscrew that would have made Jack hang his head in shame. The fighters sharply flipped up and apart behind him and converged back into a hunting pack right on his tail, their laser fire shaving off his shields in quick, precise shots. Fuck, less than ten seconds into a dogfight and he was already losing his shield!

Geoff forced the shuttle into a nosedive to the ground, the fighters right behind him, following him into a canyon. He ducked and weaved to try avoid fire, gritting his teeth as more power of his shields was chipped off. Rock formations caught his eye and he sharply banked left, then quickly regretted his decision. He was not an ace pilot the way Jack was. There was a reason he and Yellow had been partners, and not one of the more fluid Lions. He swung back and forth like a heavy pendulum to avoid the tall spires and bridging formations of rock in the canyon, ignoring the alarms all on the port display screaming of shield levels and the fact that his turns, too late or too soon, were chipping more pieces of the shield and slivers of the shuttle itself away.

“Fuck, shit, shit,” he cursed over and over as the shields continued dropping from the rocks and the fighters shooting him, who were still right on his tail despite the obstacle course of rock spires. One ahead caught his eye, a formation that at one point made a bridge with three other spires across the canyon crevice but had broken apart over time. A chunk of that bridge close to the canyon wall had created an opening just big enough he could maybe, _maybe_ slip most of himself through and against his instincts Geoff aimed his course to it.

“Needle and thread, come oooon, needle and thread,” Geoff said through the shaking and screaming in his nerves. The shields were clipped down to three percent, then one, and Geoff flipped the shuttle into a barrel roll. The world spun with him, shadows briefly passing over him and while something snapped around him, he whooped as he came out the other side whole and not on fire.

Behind him, he glanced at one fighter ship slapping the rock bridge and slamming right into the canyon wall in an explosion. A second one took the brunt of the flying debri of rock and exploded fighter ship and crashed into the ground of the crevice far below. No explosion, but they were going to be down there for a hot minute.

Three fighters were still behind him, and Geoff returned his gaze forward and pulled the controls to keep going.

Instead, the shuttle began falling nose first.

“What the fuck!?” he yelled in panic, trying the controls to regain power and steering. Why wasn’t it flying right?

He checked the display. It wasn’t just the shields that were gone, he found. The wings of the shuttle were missing completely, ugly torn metal and sparking wire where they formerly were attached.

“...Ah. Shit.”

The ground rushed closer, and Geoff scrambled to open the port to the shuttle with one hand while the other hand summoned the yellow bayard from the lone piece of paladin armor around his thigh, and jumped straight up. The shuttle continued careening towards the surface while Geoff, much lighter, stayed airborne. It exploded upon crashing, bits of the shuttle scattering across the ground. He only had seconds before he would hit the ground and became a bloody and messy Geoff pancake to accompany the shuttle pieces.

A blue of purple and red, a split second. The bayard read him and whipped out, sailing straight for the fighter ship whizzing past him. The hook it formed sunk deep into the metal and the brilliant yellow tether reeled Geoff in to the ship mid-air. Once he touched smooth galra metal he desperately grabbed for extra purchase to plaster himself flat across the surface, one hand still gripping his bayard grappling hook for the lifeline that it was, anchored deep and still in the ship. The wind whipped around him, sharp and cutting, and fuck, had their ships gotten faster over the ten thousand and five years he was napping?!

Gravity began turning on him, his stomach dropped, and suddenly Geoff was upside down and screaming as the fighter ship he was hooked to tried to shake him off. The world righted itself up, and Geoff made the mistake of deflating with relief. Immediately after, the ship spun in dizzying barrel rolls, tossing Geoff about and making his stomach drop, roll, and flip with the ship.

“Shit! Shit, shit,” he began chanting, and then over the whipping of wind he heard a terrible creaking as the hook of his bayard began to shift, jerking him backward, “shit, shit, shit, shit-” and then with a sudden snap a piece of the ship’s shell freed itself, taking Geoff with it as he screamed one extended, heartfelt, “SHIT!!”.

Why did he think splitting up was a good idea?!  

Geoff flailed his arms, gripping the bayard tight as he and the world flipped and spun. He flipped in the air almost seemingly with no sign of slowing or stopping as he hurtled in the air, vision filled with sky, then ground, sky, ground, ground and sky, sky, ground, and so on. He had no time to try to figure out what was what other than sky versus ground, no way to figure out if he was aiming the bayard at the canyon wall, another ship, or the ground.

The bayard whipped out, the brilliant yellow shooting like a released arrow until it struck solid, and with a harsh jerk it began reeling him to its new purchase. The world was righted for a moment, and Geoff could see then that he was headed straight for the canyon wall. The bayard read him and released its purchase as he hurtled towards the canyon wall, returned to his hand, and then shot back out. It yanked at him once again, this time in a more level angle. The bayard’s hook returned, and he sailed it back out. The closer he got to the wall and further down to the ground he was going, he changed the angle of the bayard’s hook.

When he was coming close enough to smack the canyon wall, the bayard changed from a grappling hook to a shield that was long enough to protect his entire arm, shoulder, and his head, that was wide enough to duck most of his body into, and a row of large hooked teeth facing outward on the outside. He slammed into the wall almost hard enough to lose his grip on the bayard, the hooked teeth of the shield latching onto the rock, keeping him to it as he continued his descent. The teeth sawed through the rock while the thick shield plating protected most of him from the debri as he sailed down, clinging desperately to the bayard and almost crushing the handle.

A few rocks managed to bounce off the shield and smack his temple and slice his cheek, but with gritted teeth Geoff held fast until the very end. At a much kinder twenty feet from the solid floor of the canyon, the bayard released its hooked shield and became its idle handle and guard form and Geoff hit the ground in an unkind tuck and roll. He flipped on the ground, scraping rock and sand, but he came to a flopping stop that had him on his back looking up at the green sky.

“Hhhfucking spirits,” he coughed, “almost wish I’d have just made a pancake of myself after all that.” he grumbled, stumbling back up to his feet. He bend backwards to stretch his muscles and try to pop the vertebrae in his back. The bayard disappeared back into storage in the paladin armor around his thigh. Overhead, some of the scout ships flew over, forcing Geoff into ducking behind the nearest form of cover. Unsurprisingly, it was a rock pillar he ducked behind.

While he waited for them to pass, he pulled up his wrist-mounted scanner, let it calibrate to the planet, and spotted the avatar of the Yellow Lion on the map.

“.... huh.” Geoff didn’t know whether it was luck or fate, but the map showed that the Yellow Lion was ahead, waiting at the end of the canyon, not much farther from him than a ten minute walk. He stretched and popped his back one more time, his ears twitching at the delightful sound of popping bones when it worked, and then he set off at a brisk pace.

The end of the canyon came to a knife point meeting, and right at the flooring of the knife point was a large opening carved out of the rock, where a cargo elevator was tucked under the shadows.  Geoff checked his map and saw that the Yellow Lion was just ahead of him, right where the cargo elevator laid like a welcome mat. He was going to be going underground, then.

Sticking close to the walls and behind any and every rock he could fit behind for cover as he moved, Geoff made his way to the elevator slowly but surely. His footsteps clip-clopped against the deep purple metal plating, making him freeze and swivel around to look for anyone who might have heard. Still clear, he released a sigh and approached the elevator controls, albeit quieter.

He looked at the controls, and he physically felt the calm snap from his body as he growled, “Oh for fuck’s sake.”

The controls were labeled and written in the Galra language. Geoff could read, write, and speak the Galra language…. from ten thousand years ago. He was catching the cores of the words on some of the labels, but making real sense of all of it was going to take some time.

“Maybe I could just hotwire the damn thing instead…” he considered over the sound of soft cli-clopping, going to kneel down and pry open the plating on the controls to get to the wires, only to feel the chill down his spine when it hit him.

Figuratively, and a second later when he shot to his feet and turned to defend himself, _literally._

Geoff barely caught the sight of purple armor and glaring red insignia before the broad side of the sword came down on his temple, and then all he could catch was black nothingness.

**Author's Note:**

> like it? hate it? you can come yell at me on tumblr, either on my main (same name and everything) or the artblog artsyorangeykay (which is the majority of where i post stuff)


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